New Orleans council members discuss jail changes

A prison consultant says changes in New Orleans police and court practices would help reduce the city jail population - and the cost of implementing court-ordered reforms.

James Austin told the City Council Friday that the Orleans Parish Prison population is drifting downward, but needs to be reduced by hundreds to avoid higher operating costs and the need to construct more jail space. Austin said police and courts should avoid locking up people for less serious offenses. He also said the city should work with the state to reduce the number of state inmates held in the local lockup.

Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who runs the jail, agreed that reducing the number of state inmates is important, but noted that there are several reasons, largely out of the sheriff's control, why state inmates are held at the jail. State inmates who are probation or parole violators awaiting prosecution in New Orleans courtrooms and those who are entering pre-release programs are among those being held.

Gusman went before the council's budget hearing Friday for the first of three appearances to discuss his 2014 budget.

The city, which funds the jail, recently agreed to pay $1.88 million extra this year for court-ordered reforms, including added security and medical staff and pay raises to bring up salaries. That ended months of contentious legal and political arguments over funding court-ordered reforms at the jail. The reforms resulted from an agreement Gusman reached with the Justice Department and lawyers for inmates who had filed suit over lack of medical care, abuse and lack of security at the lockup.

The agreement left unresolved funding amounts for the court-ordered reforms in future years.

Currently, the jail's population is around 2,300. A new jail building, nearing completion and expected to open in the spring as a replacement for existing facilities, will hold 1,483. The city and the sheriff also reached an agreement earlier this year on construction of another facility to separate dangerous or the vulnerable from the general jail population.

"We've been doing just about everything we can to reduce the population of state inmates," Gusman told council members.